Ancestral Neanderthal genetic material in modern humans was inserted through interbreeding approximately 47,000 years back.
Unlocking the secrets of our ancient past just got a tad clearer, y'all!
Two latest studies on human DNA analyses suggest that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens got down and dirty during a narrow epoch around 47,000 years ago, narrowing down previous estimates which put this intermingling somewhere between 65,000 and 41,000 years ago.
Evolutionary geneticist Kay Prüfer from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who co-authored one of the papers, shares that this genetic interplay means that all living people outside Africa descended from the very same human tribe that got it on with Neanderthals during this specific time frame.
Before this sexy liaison, Homo sapiens had departed from Africa and encountered Neanderthals residing in Europe and Asia. Neanderthals kicked the bucket about 40,000 years ago, but people today devoid of recent African ancestry can trace about 1 to 3 percent of their genetic inheritance to Neanderthals (Science News, 2013).
Modern-day Africans have a smaller percentage of Neanderthal DNA, possibly due to African folks migrating back over the past 20,000 years (Science News, 2020).
Researchers delved into humans' Neandertal inheritance by constructing an evolutionary timeline using info from over 300 H. sapiens individuals spanning the last 45,000 years.
Variations in Neandertal DNA found in these samples point to most genes inherited from Neanderthals coming from a single period lasting from 50,500 to 43,500 years ago, according to one study published in the Dec. 13 Science.
"Our analysis shows that the out-of-Africa migration must have been completed 43,500 years ago," said evolutionary geneticist Priya Moorjani of the University of California, Berkeley during a December 11 news briefing (Science News, 2021).
Some Neanderthal genes - including those controlling immunity, skin color, and metabolism - became darn useful rather quickly, settling into human DNA within about 100 generations, according to the study (Science News, 2020).
Another study, published online in December 12, Nature, echoed the first study’s interbreeding time frame and the idea that there was a single event resulting in the Neandertal DNA that lives on in today's Eurasian populations. This study, however, examined DNA from seven ancient humans, some of which were the oldest and highest-quality H. sapiens genomes sequenced to date.
Even though these ancient hominids died out, the Neandertal DNA they carried traces back to the single interbreeding event common to all modern-day people of non-African descent. It's like these pals kept the flame alive, even if just genetically.
As Capra, an evolutionary geneticist from the University of California, San Francisco, stated, "Both really strongly agree that there was likely one main period of interbreeding between Neanderthals and the ancestors of non-Africans" (Science News, 2021).
Sources:- https://www.sciencenews.org (Science News, 2013, 2020, 2021)
The integration of Neanderthal DNA into the human genome was primarily during a specific time frame of around 50,500 to 43,500 years ago, as suggested by recent studies in environmental-science. This genetic interplay has significantly influenced various aspects of human biology, including immunity, skin color, and metabolism, which can be traced using data-and-cloud-computing and technology in the field of science.
